let me re phrase that
I want “1” to look like “2” with out razing the polycount or subdividing “1’s” mesh.
some how they make low polycount meshes in games look good and I want to learn how to do that.
“Edge crease” is for subdivided meshes.
I don’t know what you mesh by “edge smooth”
I couldn’t reely see any difference between “edge split modifier” & smooth/flat.
I have been trying to figure out how to make low polycount meshes look good for a few weeks now.
I have terrorized google and you tube looking for tutorials to tell me how to do that.
I’ve asked on renderosity blender forums and zBrush forums.
The mesh in the .jpg & file is one of 100’s of peace’s for a mech tank.
I know it’s not the best modeling but the original was going to be a subdivided mesh but when I realized the final mesh polycount was going to be 100,000’s polycount.
Then the idea was to modify the mesh so it works subdivide or not subdivided.
Since low polycount meshes is new to me I don’t know how important topology is but I’m learning.
Hopefully after learning all this my next low polycount meshes topology will be a little better ,hopefully
Edge split modifier generally can be used to reduce polycount, because it does separate the mesh in parts and you can keep it separate (applying the mod).
A separated mesh is common in lowpoly, if you look at lowpoly characters, everything is separated. For non-organic models, you can convert everything to triangles and check for wrong shadows (and fix them with rotating edges).
Another common thing in organic characters is reduce tris until the silhouette is no more conserved.
Smoothing uses normals to determine the appearance and there are ways to affect those. One common thing is to use normal maps. Bump also helps to hide the imperfections in the shading.